REVIEW: Baby Driver is a stylish but forgettable remix of the classic getaway movie

Meet Baby (Ansel Elgort).

He’s not quite your average wheelman.

He looks like the lovechild of Ferris Bueller and a young, slightly goofier Harrison Ford (right down to the Han Solo waistcoat), and always has a pair of sunglasses at the ready.…

John Wick: Chapter 2 shows a franchise in no danger of burning out

He might not be exactly Shakespearean in his conception, but the character of John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is, at heart, an absurdly tragic one.

The world’s deadliest assassin, his attempt to settle down to an ordinary life is made impossible; first, by the death of his wife, and, second, by the theft of his beloved car and the murder of his dog.…

Collateral Beauty gets it as right as it can in service of a bad idea

Collateral Beauty is a awards-baiting drama about three big-city advertising execs who come together to gas-light their grieving friend for the sake of a big payday.

Okay, so it’s not quite as a simple as that, morality-wise; a fact that the film is desperate to impress upon us.…

My 2016 LFF gets off to a five-star start with the utterly captivating Moonlight

A silent boy with accusatory eyes. A shy long-limbed teen picked on at school. A musclebound man looking for a connection. All the same person, all lost; all trying to make sense of the world and their place in it.

Based on Tarell Alvin McCraney’s un-produced play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, Moonlight, directed and adapted by Barry Jenkins, is a powerfully intimate triptych about growing up poor, black, and gay in contemporary America; specifically Miami, Florida.…

Blair Witch gets a bit lost in the woods

There’s something ironic about having your phone confiscated when going in to see a found footage movie, as I did.

Initially marketed as an original project, The Woods – complete with misleading trailer footage of a very non-Maryland forest – Adam Wingard’s arboreal horror was unexpectedly revealed as a sequel to the genre-launching Blair Witch Project, which famously grossed almost a quarter of a billion off a budget of $60,000 all the way back in 1999.…

Sausage Party: a surefire way to get rid of the munchies

[ur 3.5]

Has there ever been a film as patently conceived of while stoned as Sausage Party?

While most of us would have had a bit of a giggle at the thought of sentient food reacting with horror at the prospect of being eaten – and then probably gone and ordered some pizza – Seth Rogen went and made a movie out of it.…

Lights Out: too self-illuminating to be truly terrifying

Is there any fear more primal than that of the dark?

After all, what you can’t see can kill you, especially if the what is Diana, a twitchy, pinhole-eyed wraith with an attraction to the mentally ill.

Based on a genuinely creepy short that went viral back in 2013, Lights Out, the feature début of David F.…

Suicide Squad is a toxic mess, but at least it’s more palatable than the last DC outing

Let me get the obvious comparison out of the way (at least for the first time): Suicide Squad, the latest addition to the DC Cinematic Universe, is a mess; choppy and lurid counterpart where Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice — God help us — was muggy and self-serious.

Star Trek Beyond gets ahead by going back to basics

 

Space is no longer the final frontier in cinema. In fact it’s a bit passé.

Where’s Kubrick’s star-child once evoked the wonder of journeying into the unknown, science fiction has since placed its emphasis more on the inherent risks of interstellar travel.…

Get your skates on for Cold War sporting doc Red Army

 

The Russians have always made for great villains.

Ever since the Berlin Wall went up, we’ve been menaced by burly, no-nonsense blokes with names like Ivan Drago. It’s a different sporting arena that provides the subject for Gabe Polsky’s Red State.…